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White-Out: Where Democrats Lost the House

In 2009, 76 Democrats represented primarily white working-class congressional districts. Just 15 of them are still in the House today.

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 03: Snow falls in front of the U.S. Capitol on March 3, 2014 in Washington, DC. The Federal Government is closed due to major snow storm that is expected to dump up to a foot of snow in the Washington area.

Re­pub­lic­ans have surged to their largest ma­jor­ity in the House of Rep­res­ent­at­ives since be­fore the Great De­pres­sion by blunt­ing the Demo­crat­ic ad­vant­age in dis­tricts be­ing re­shaped by grow­ing ra­cial di­versity and con­sol­id­at­ing a de­cis­ive hold over the seats that are not.

Com­pared with 2009 and 2010, when Demo­crats last con­trolled the House, the Re­pub­lic­an ma­jor­ity that takes of­fice this week has es­sen­tially held its ground in dis­tricts where minor­it­ies ex­ceed their share of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion, a Next Amer­ica ana­lys­is has found. Aided by their con­trol of re­dis­trict­ing after the 2010 census, Re­pub­lic­ans over the past three elec­tions have sim­ul­tan­eously es­tab­lished an over­whelm­ing 3-1 ad­vant­age in dis­tricts where whites ex­ceed their na­tion­al pres­ence, the ana­lys­is shows. Those white-lean­ing dis­tricts split between the parties al­most equally dur­ing the 111th Con­gress, in 2009-10.

A ma­jor­ity of the GOP gains since then have come from the Demo­crats’ near-total col­lapse in one set of dis­tricts: the largely blue-col­lar places in which the white share of the pop­u­la­tion ex­ceeds the na­tion­al av­er­age, and the por­tion of whites with at least a four-year col­lege de­gree is less that the na­tion­al av­er­age. While Re­pub­lic­ans held a 20-seat lead in the dis­tricts that fit that de­scrip­tion in the 111th Con­gress, the party has swelled that ad­vant­age to a crush­ing 125 seats today. That 105-seat ex­pan­sion of the GOP mar­gin in these dis­tricts by it­self ac­counts for about three-quar­ters of the 136-seat swing from the Demo­crats’ 77-seat ma­jor­ity in 2009 to the 59-seat ma­jor­ity Re­pub­lic­ans en­joy in the Con­gress con­ven­ing now.

The GOP dom­in­ance in these pre­dom­in­antly white work­ing-class dis­tricts un­der­scores the struc­tur­al chal­lenge fa­cing Demo­crats: While the party has re­peatedly cap­tured the White House des­pite big de­fi­cits among the work­ing-class white voters who once anchored its elect­or­al co­ali­tion, these res­ults show how dif­fi­cult it will be to re­cap­ture the House without im­prov­ing on that per­form­ance. “The ques­tion is: Are we at rock bot­tom here?” says Tom Boni­er, CEO of the Demo­crat­ic voter tar­get­ing firm Tar­getS­mart Com­mu­nic­a­tions.

These trends present Re­pub­lic­ans with a mir­ror-im­age chal­lenge. The vast ma­jor­ity of their House mem­bers can thrive without de­vis­ing an agenda on is­sues—such as im­mig­ra­tion re­form—that at­tract the minor­ity voters whose grow­ing num­bers na­tion­ally have helped Demo­crats win the pop­u­lar vote in five of the past six pres­id­en­tial elec­tions. “When you can go out scream­ing ‘am­nesty’ and not get any push­back in your dis­tricts, you are more prone to scream ‘am­nesty,’ ” says vet­er­an GOP poll­ster Whit Ayres. “It leads to an at­ti­tude of: ‘prob­lem, what prob­lem?’ “

To un­der­stand the role of demo­graphy in the House’s shift­ing bal­ance of power, Next Amer­ica has ana­lyzed data from the Census Bur­eau’s Amer­ic­an Com­munity Sur­vey dat­ing back to the 111th Con­gress, the last time the Demo­crats held a ma­jor­ity. To pro­duce a demo­graph­ic por­trait of the dis­tricts rep­res­en­ted by Re­pub­lic­ans and Demo­crats, the ana­lys­is ex­amined the ACS res­ults for the first year of each Con­gress from 2009 to 2013; for 2015, it uses the 2013 ACS, the most re­cent avail­able.

For each Con­gress, the ana­lys­is seg­men­ted House dis­tricts based on wheth­er the share of their non­white pop­u­la­tion ex­ceeded or trailed the na­tion­al av­er­age, and wheth­er the share of their white pop­u­la­tion with at least a four-year col­lege de­gree ex­ceeded or trailed the na­tion­al av­er­age. That ex­er­cise pro­duced what we call the four quad­rants of Con­gress: dis­tricts with high levels of ra­cial di­versity, and high levels of white edu­ca­tion (what we call “hi-hi” dis­tricts); dis­tricts with high levels of ra­cial di­versity and low levels of edu­ca­tion (hi-lo dis­tricts); dis­tricts with low levels of di­versity and high levels of white edu­ca­tion (lo-hi dis­tricts); and dis­tricts with low levels of di­versity and low levels of white edu­ca­tion (lo-lo dis­tricts). (For a more de­tailed de­scrip­tion of these quad­rants, and typ­ic­al mem­bers in each one, look here.)

The num­ber of dis­tricts in each quad­rant has shif­ted from Con­gress to Con­gress, partly be­cause the na­tion­al av­er­ages of di­versity and white edu­ca­tion levels have changed, and also be­cause the 2010 re­dis­trict­ing sub­stan­tially re­dis­trib­uted voters in many states. And be­cause this study used a dif­fer­ent meth­od­o­logy than when Na­tion­al Journ­alfirst ex­amined these dy­nam­ics in 2009, the dis­tricts in each quad­rant dif­fer slightly from that earli­er as­sess­ment as well.

Over­all, since 2009, the bal­ance of power in Con­gress has rad­ic­ally tilted from the 77-seat Demo­crat­ic ad­vant­age of 256-179 in the 111th Con­gress, to the 59-seat GOP edge of 247-188 in the Con­gress con­ven­ing now.

The story over that peri­od is nu­anced in dis­tricts where minor­it­ies ex­ceed their na­tion­al share of the pop­u­la­tion. (The ana­lys­is looks at the total pop­u­la­tion in each dis­trict; the minor­ity share of the total vote is al­most al­ways lower.)

In 2009, Demo­crats held a 50-seat ad­vant­age (73-23) in the “hi-hi” seats that com­bine lar­ger than av­er­age num­bers of both minor­it­ies and white col­lege gradu­ates—two groups cent­ral to their mod­ern co­ali­tion. After the 2010 re­dis­trict­ing, the num­ber of seats in that quad­rant in­creased, and Demo­crats max­im­ized their edge there with a 64-seat (83-19) ad­vant­age in the 113th Con­gress (2013-14). In Novem­ber, Demo­crats lost three seats in this quad­rant, but they still hold a sol­id 58-seat lead (80-22) there.

Since 2009, Demo­crats have slightly lost ground in the “hi-lo” seats that com­bine a high­er than av­er­age num­ber of minor­it­ies with few­er than av­er­age white col­lege gradu­ates. In these dis­tricts, Demo­crats have slipped mod­estly from a 28-seat (52-24) ad­vant­age in 2009, to an 18-seat (44-26) lead in the new Con­gress. (Demo­crats lost one seat in this quad­rant last Novem­ber.)

Over­all, these res­ults mean the two parties have held their ground in the high-di­versity seats. In 2009, Demo­crats held a 78-seat edge (125-47) in those dis­tricts and con­trolled 73 per­cent of them; in 2015, they hold a 76-seat edge (124-48) and con­trol 72 per­cent of them.

It’s reas­on­able to ar­gue that Re­pub­lic­ans have scored a tac­tic­al vic­tory by pre­vent­ing House Demo­crats from de­riv­ing more be­ne­fit from grow­ing di­versity. The quad­rants are a re­l­at­ive meas­ure tied to the na­tion­al av­er­ages in di­versity and edu­ca­tion, and the ab­so­lute num­bers are stead­ily grow­ing on both fronts: From 2009 through 2013, the cut-off point between the high- and low-di­versity dis­tricts rose from a minor­ity pop­u­la­tion of 35.1 per­cent to 37.6 per­cent. That pop­u­la­tion in­crease should have strengthened Demo­crats not only in the high-di­versity seats but also in places just be­low the na­tion­al av­er­age in minor­ity pop­u­la­tion that we clas­si­fy as low-di­versity.

Yet, as we’ll ex­am­ine in the series’ next in­stall­ment, Re­pub­lic­ans have re­mained sur­pris­ingly com­pet­it­ive in the dis­tricts that are clustered just above and be­low the na­tion­al av­er­age in their minor­ity pop­u­la­tion level. The fail­ure to gen­er­ate more gains from grow­ing di­versity rep­res­ents a crit­ic­al op­por­tun­ity cost for House Demo­crats. “Just be­cause we have demo­graph­ic change is no as­sur­ance that Demo­crats will win everything,” says Ayres.

Still, the GOP’s march to a House ma­jor­ity has come al­most en­tirely through dis­tricts where whites ex­ceed their na­tion­al num­bers.

In 2009, the last Demo­crat­ic ma­jor­ity held a 19-seat ad­vant­age (55-36) in the largely sub­urb­an “lo-hi” dis­tricts with few­er than av­er­age minor­it­ies and more than the na­tion­al share of white col­lege gradu­ates. Re­dis­trict­ing and the wave of 2010 al­lowed Re­pub­lic­ans to in­vert that to a GOP edge of 19 seats in 2011 (54-35). Demo­crats did well here in 2012, re­gain­ing six seats, but gave back two in Novem­ber, and Re­pub­lic­ans now lead in this quad­rant by 10 seats (49-39).

The epi­cen­ter of the earth­quake that has trans­formed the House, though, has been the work­ing-class “lo-lo” dis­tricts with few­er minor­it­ies or col­lege-edu­cated whites. These dis­tricts (as we’ll ex­plore more later in the series) also tend to be older and less af­flu­ent than the na­tion over­all.

In 2009, Re­pub­lic­ans held 96 of these dis­tricts and Demo­crats 76, for a 20-seat GOP edge. As Uni­versity of Cali­for­nia (San Diego) polit­ic­al sci­ent­ist Gary C. Jac­ob­son points out, giv­en the Demo­crats’ dif­fi­culties with work­ing-class white voters at the pres­id­en­tial level dat­ing back to 1968, even that show­ing prob­ably rep­res­en­ted an un­sus­tain­able high point for Demo­crats. It was driv­en, he notes, by the party’s gains in work­ing-class dis­tricts dur­ing the 2006 and 2008 elec­tions held while then-Pres­id­ent George W. Bush’s pop­ular­ity fell to its nadir.

The Demo­crat­ic col­lapse in these dis­tricts since then has been mo­nu­ment­al. The big change came in the 2010 elec­tion, when re­dis­trict­ing and the white work­ing-class re­coil against Pres­id­ent Obama’s first two years hit Demo­crats from these places with gale force: After that elec­tion, Re­pub­lic­ans opened a 90-seat edge (128-38) in these dis­tricts. Strik­ingly, Demo­crats lost fur­ther ground in these dis­tricts even dur­ing Obama’s sol­id reelec­tion vic­tory in 2012 and again last Novem­ber, when they sur­rendered sev­en more seats in this quad­rant. The res­ult has left Re­pub­lic­ans hold­ing 150 of “lo-lo” seats and Demo­crats just 25. From 2009, when Demo­crats held 44 per­cent of the seats in this group­ing, the party’s share has plummeted to just 14 per­cent. That’s a far great­er per­cent­age de­cline than their erosion since then in each of the oth­er three quad­rants.

In a meas­ure of the party’s col­lapse on this ter­rain, of the 76 House Demo­crats who rep­res­en­ted these work­ing-class “lo-lo” dis­tricts in 2009, just 15 re­main in the cham­ber today.

In all, Re­pub­lic­ans now hold an astound­ing 135-seat ad­vant­age (199-64) and fully 76 per­cent of the House seats in which whites ex­ceed their share of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion. In 2009, when Demo­crats last con­trolled the House ma­jor­ity, the two parties split such seats al­most ex­actly in half, with Re­pub­lic­ans hold­ing 132 and Demo­crats 131.

Even­tu­ally, the con­tin­ued growth and dis­pers­al of the minor­ity pop­u­la­tion could change the equa­tion for House dom­in­ance. But to win back the House in any near-term fu­ture, these num­bers sug­gest there is no al­tern­at­ive for Demo­crats than to im­prove their per­form­ance among the white voters who have provided Re­pub­lic­an con­gres­sion­al can­did­ates with al­most ex­actly three-fifths of their votes in each of the past three elec­tions.

“Re­ly­ing on demo­graph­ics takes a lot of pa­tience,” says Jac­ob­son. “Even­tu­ally, people will move around and the dis­tricts will be­come more di­verse in states that used to be over­whelm­ingly white. But that’s a very slow pro­cess “… and care­ful ger­ry­man­der­ing can al­low you to hold on for quite a while.”

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) are threatening to block the spending bill—and prevent the Senate from leaving town—"because it would not extend benefits for retired coal miners for a year or pay for their pension plans. The current version of the bill would extend health benefits for four months. ... Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Thursday afternoon moved to end debate on the continuing resolution to fund the government through April 28. But unless Senate Democrats relent, that vote cannot be held until Saturday at 1 a.m. at the earliest, one hour after the current funding measure expires."

Source:

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